GPS locator system is highly complicated

Sunday

Nov 30, 2008 at 6:00 AM

In a recent letter to the editor from Millbury (Telegram & Gazette, Nov. 24), the writer wondered why WPI received funds for “a firefighter locater system,” when he had told the former fire chief days after the tragic fire that he had “sent him the GPS type system idea” for fighting fires. The letter writer continued on to lament the waste of time and money spent on the development of a system by WPI researchers.

Clearly, the letter writer doesn’t understand that his GPS-type system will not work inside buildings with metal support structures such as the Worcester Cold Storage warehouse. Signal fading, multi-path and the ability to work reliably in a hazardous environment, are just a few of the many problems that WPI researchers have had to address to create a new, non-GPS based system, which has the precision needed to determine, for example, exactly which side of a wall a victim might be slumped against.

The reason why several different research groups are working on this problem is, because it’s a very complex and difficult problem to solve. I’m incredibly proud of my department colleagues for their creativity, and persistence with their groundbreaking work, while solving the numerous problems associated with the development of a technologically complex, non-GPS based precision personnel locator system that works and will undoubtedly save lives when deployed.